Runners and riders for top jobs at Beach

Senex Energy CEO Ian Davies, above, is understood to be one executive in the possible running for the top job at Beach Energy.

The departure of Beach Energy’s chief executive Matt Kay on the afternoon of last November’s Melbourne Cup was swift – and unexpected.

Mr Kay’s exit appeared to catch the board by surprise with no obvious successor in waiting, as chair Glenn Davis turned to finance boss Morne Engelbrecht as interim boss.

When headhunters at Korn Ferry started drawing up a list of candidates to replace Mr Kay, Santos was an obvious place to start.

Its Adelaide competitor was midway through its $21bn merger with Oil Search, a process that would effectively create a new management team while also sparking an executive shake-up as the old guard weighed whether to seek new pastures.

Adding to the intrigue was the promise of a $6m “once-off growth projects incentive” for Santos head Kevin Gallagher to deliver the oil and gas giant’s major projects to 2025, in a move that successfully kept him out of the race for Woodside Petroleum’s top job.

That meant the three logical successors to Gallagher – chief technical and marketing officer David Banks and Santos’ two chief operating officers for upstream and midstream, Brett Darley and Brett Woods – were now at least three years away from positioning themselves to succeed their Scottish boss as chief executive.

It’s little wonder, then, that Banks, Darley and Woods have all emerged as executives in the mix for the Beach job, giving each a run at a top Australian CEO gig, albeit with the added complexity of Kerry Stokes’s Seven Group as a major shareholder.

DataRoom understands the other executive in the running is Senex Energy chief executive Ian Davies.

With a takeover from South Korea’s Posco effective on April 1, the timing appears to be spot on for Davies to take on a new challenge.

One outside bet is former Shell executive Rob Jager taking the helm. Jager joined Beach as a non-executive director in December and the Kiwi is thought to be open to one last executive gig.

Kay is thought to be biding his time on gardening leave in Adelaide ahead of his next gig.